This piece is made from an old wooden curtain traditionally used in Buenos Aires. This type of curtain serves both to provide shade and security. Bacal cut the curtain into the shape of a Steinway piano lid. The piece is hung with the interior face of the lid facing the public. Bacal says, “I like how the piece connects sound and light. Normally, this type of curtain, when partially open, casts lines of light around the rooms of houses. You can see how they move across the floor and walls over time. Music endures, and sunlight moves. I’m thinking of time not just from a musical perspective, but also from a domestic one.”

A figure is contemplating the space, with both feet pointing backwards and with a pleasant and, at the same time, defiant attitude. The sculpture references the notion of the people from the “Antipodes”, the people from the other side, that was common in middle age Europe. This example of mistranslation shows how, in western society, the idea of the “other” implies some kind of negativeness or bizarreness. The “Antipodos” sculpture series shows proud antipodes, they represent the notion that we are all “others”.

The spelling alphabets, internationally used and recognized, originated from the two so-called world wars, in the last century. These acrophonic alphabets (in which each word represents its initial letter) are used to avoid misinterpretations and keep mistakes probabilities to the very least, every time the mutual understanding of a combination of letters seems to be crucial. It is not easy to find words that can be pronounced and decodified in different languages, and the alphabet known as Able Baker, created by US army in 1941 and then adopted by civil aviation, contained such an amount of sounds unique to the English language that another spelling alphabet, called Ana Brazil, was used in Latin America.

Currently, the most used of these codes is the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, also known as the OTAN phonetic alphabet, which, despite its reference to the North Atlantic, is used by civil aviation companies and radio amateurs throughout the planet. Even if it departed from the recognition of a necessity to find common sounds to English, French and Spanish, the OTAN alphabet comprises a considerable number of words that allude to Anglo-Saxon culture: from Foxtrot and Golf to Whisky and Yankee. Ironically enough, Juliet and Romeo (characters condemned to a tragic finale due to miscommunication) are also included in this list.

“Alfabeto fonético”, presented here in its first applied version, is a proposition to create a new spelling alphabet, trying to use words of an international meaning and spelling, even if their pronunciation is adapted to the phonetics of each different language and the customary sounds of each country. Some of the selected words, deriving from Greek or Latin, were initially mythological or scientific concepts and ended up being used in daily basis (such as Atlas or Flora); some others are so specific to a certain culture or geography that tend to be used every time a reference to their connotation is needed or desired elsewhere (such as Harem or Ninja); and some seem to have become transnational due to the necessity of them being recognized by foreigners anywhere (such as Camping or Taxi).

The video created by Robbio in 2011, resorts to images of iron gratings used in houses and buildings to weave a commentary about the impossibility of permanence or the reconciling of opposites.


Untitled (cupula) is part of a series of images of domes of buildings done by Robbio, where the figure is interrupted by the absence of the ridge. With this procedure, Robbio distances the figure from its original representation, pointing to an exit at the top, as an escape valve for the ancestral symbology tied to domes.

In the series of photographs Caleidoscópicas (2018), Dias & Riedweg rephotographed Hovland’s frames of layouts for magazines from the computer screen during the editing of the videos that integrates CameraContact. As in Arquivo romance, the artists use a kaleidoscope between the camera and Hovland’s images. In both works, the camera is guided by the movement of the kaleidoscope, making the focus change from one mirror to the other and consequently from one part to another of the final image. In addition, the technique does not allow real-time monitoring of the camera’s recording, much the same as with analog cameras which only allowed viewing of the photos after the film was developed. The attempt to fragment the image into one with more than one possible focus in the new structure reveals a recurrent narrative of plural voices in Dias & Riedweg’s works.

Image created from the superposition of two different moments of day / night mapping in the terrestrial globe. The title refers to the time that sunlight takes to reach Earth.

The work of Lia Chaia moves through different languages such as photography, video, performance, installation and urban interventions. Among the issues of her concern are the perceptions and experiences of everyday life, as the permanent tension between culture and nature, part of a process of reflection on the way nature has been appropriated by the standards of urban culture. Chaia is also interested in thinking and understanding how the body reacts to stimuli and breaks of the contemporary world.

The Tiras of Lia Chaia deal with circulation in a hybrid, natural and urban environment at the same time. The Tiras function as a camouflage device to disguise the body in the nature.

Chaia Masks, made of red wood, suede and sequins, are like figureheads with many eyes and act as protective objects. Chaia says that masks refer to Arab culture and, in particular, to the proverb “may my eyes protect you (ya aini)”. “The eyes multiply to favor the vigil,” says Chaia, who has worked with the proverb in drawings and performances before.

In Transfusão [Transfusion], Chaia uses PVC pipes and cords of different tones of red to refer not only to a circuit of human veins, but also to architecture as something both alive and propositive.